kwong-juh duh

01/30/2014

Child abuse at Uintah Elementary School

And the kids were abused by the school officials themselves!

You might say I am being sensationalist or overdramatic, but I assure you that I am not.

If I were to serve my children a meal and then suddenly take the plate away and throw the food in the garbage, giving them only milk and a piece of fruit and telling them "daddy didn't pay the child support this month, you don't get dinner" I would be abusing my children emotionally, and probably physically by intentionally not feeding them a proper meal.

That is exactly what the Salt Lake City school district did at Uintah Elementary School. On Monday they tried to notify parents that had a balance due in their children's lunch accounts. Then on Tuesday, after children had been handed lunches, someone came and took the food away from the kids and threw it in the garbage because their parents hadn't deposited money into their lunch account yet. Maybe payday isn't until Friday. Maybe mom forgot. Who knows the reason, it is still totally unacceptable to take food away from a human being and throw it out.

Salt Lake City school district has just punished and humiliated children for an issue that was entirely out of their control and should have been handled directly with the parents. They just sent these children the message that "we would rather take food away from you and throw it in the garbage than let you eat it, that's how little you matter". No normal human being with a heart would have taken food away from children because of their parent's debt. The person who made this decision and every person responsible for carrying it out should be fired and not allowed to work with children ever again. They humiliated and emotionally scarred children, and for what? They didn't recover the money their parents owed, they didn't recover the money for the lunches they threw in the garbage, they simply wasted food and traumatized children. And while they may think they only hurt 40 kids (only! One would have been too many!) the reality is that every kid who saw this happen now has reason to fear their school lunch being taken away and thrown out too.